Mike Sanders
|death= |civid=52045-90865-MS |rank=*Sergeant (2537) (formerly) *Master Sergeant (2542) (formerly) *Terrorist leader |gender=Male |height=1.90 meter (6 ft 2.8 in) |weapons= |equipment= |vehicles= |hair=Black |eyes=*Light gray (natural) *Light yellow |augment= |cyber=*Cybernetic arms and legs *Cybernetic optic neural interface *Micro fusion generator |medical= |era=* * |types= |notable= |affiliation=* (formerly) * (briefly) *Ember Coalition }} Mike Sanders is a human cyborg created by one of the many science divisions in the Ember Coalition in an unknown facility. He served as an UNSC in the early years of the Human-Covenant War and took part in the when the Covenant invaded. After the war, he left the military and soon after joined the Ember Coalition as a freelance assassin. At some point before the Created Crisis was Mike augmented with countless cybernetics that enhanced both his mental and physical capabilities. Due to confusion after his augmentation, he felt more machine than man and managed to talk his way into joining the Created. However, he quickly saw that the ideals of the Created were too oppressive and rebelled against them and staged large-scale attacks against their rule. After the Created Crisis, he began hunting down the leaders of the Ember Coalition, killing them and taking over all of their assets. He eventually took complete control over the vast terrorist organization and became its leader. Biography Early life Mike Sanders is assumed to be born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Earth on August 24. 2524 though it's not truly known. He was found on the doorsteps to an orphanage in Amsterdam on that date and was taken in and given the name Mike. Mike grew up to become quite the troublemaker but he still loved the orphanage as his home. He was eventually adopted into the Sanders family by Henry and Amanda Sanders. Henry and Amanda had a hard time trying to make Mike drop his bad and troublesome habits but after a car accident where Amanda and Mike were involved turned Mike's behavior for the better and the three of them grew closer as a family. His adoptive parents often tried to get Mike to make friends with the other kids from school but he mostly preferred to be alone. He did, however, become friends with a girl from a poor family, Emma Bosch. Though she came from a poor family, she was always in a bright mood and she could always get a smile on Mike's lips no matter what mood he was in. Mike and Emma eventually got together when they got older but her abusive dad always left a stained mark on their relationship. Mike joined the UNSC Marine Corps at the age of 18 in . Though he was away for long periods of time he still kept in touch with Emma and they saw each other every time they could. One night in called Emma while Mike was stationed on a military base near Amsterdam. Her father had tracked her down and had tried to abuse her again but had managed to flee from him. Enraged, Mike left the base in the middle of the night to confront Emma's father. He found him and threatened to kill him if he didn't leave Emma alone but her father responded with violence and tried to shot Mike with a gun he had hidden in one of his pockets. Things escalated quickly from there and it ended with Mike standing over Emma's father's dead body. Though it was filed as self-defense it still left a mark on the young couple and they decided to leave Amsterdam for good and move to New York City, . They got married soon after getting settled in New York City. Human-Covenant War Not soon after they had been married was Mike forced to take part in the war and was stationed on when the the planet. Mike fought for three whole days with little to no sleep against the Covenant onslaught, killing dozens of their troops while he saw his comrades die one by one. Though the drawn out battle allowed countless civilians to escape safely from the planet and the Covenant sustaining heavy casualties was the UNSC eventually forced to abandon the planet. Mike was lucky to be on one of the few surviving ships that managed to flee from the large Covenant fleet in orbit. The battle had shaken Mike to his very core and swore to himself that he would avenge his fallen comrades that had died during the three-day long battle. Mike would be given some time off the corps after he returned to civilized space to get himself back together after the horrors that occurred on Jericho VII. He used some the time to write a message to Emma back on Earth where he described what had happened on the abandoned colony. The message, however, was altered by ONI agents so that the parts about the battle was altered so that it sounded like he had fought against . After Mike recovered, was he then deployed to the planet of to take part in the . He fought with his squad to secure the retreat of civilians while of the targeted the assaulting Covenant forces. The Squad's sergeant was wound by a plasma bolt to the right leg during one of the firefights. Mike took command of the squad and guided them through the war torn streets to both push back Covenant troops and to search for survivors. It was also during this battle that Mike was able to not only kill a but also a in close combat with support from his squad. They had been taken by surprise by the Sangheili but the explosive arrival of the Jiralhanae had taken even the Sangheili by surprise. That had been the moment when Mike and his men had jumped the Sangheili, stabbing it repeatably with their combat knives while a few others distracted the Jiralhanae. Seeing the Sangheili go down, Mike managed to get a hold of its . He then charged the Jiralhanae from behind and impaled it with the sword through its back and out of its chest. The Jiralhanae managed to knock him over with a backhand swing before it fell to the floor dead. The swing had broken his right arm but his squad's medic was able to treat the injury with what equipment he had on hand. After the battle was Mike promoted to Sergeant and was rewarded the for his bravery. Mike would keep fighting in the outer colonies for years and even managed to get promoted two times to Master Sergeant. He and his platoon were stationed on only a few months before the Covenant initiated their of the planet. Mike led his men to the best of his abilities to drive off Covenant assaults and even managed to regain lost ground from time to time. But as the battle waged on the battle headed into a repeated pattern for the UNSC personal. Hold the line, get overwhelmed and retreat. In the last days of the battle for Alluvion was Mike and the troops under his command tasked with holding off Covenant forces from a landing zone dedicated to getting civilians off world. While they held the line for more than two hours locked in constant battle with waves of Covenant troops without any reinforcements to support them they eventually began to waver. Tired and with little ammunition left was Mike forced to declare that his men couldn't hold the Covenant at bay any longer without sacrificing all of his men. Mike and what was left of him men got to the landing zone where the last few civilians was still being guided into the transports. Before Mike could board one of the last transports were the landing zone attacked by a pair of that quickly attacked the nearest transport full of civilians. The craft was gravely damaged doing its lift off and crashed, killing everyone on board. Mike, quickly realizing that they would all be doomed if they didn't take out the Hunters and ordered his men off the transports again to deal with the monstrous beasts. The first one was taken down by the combined fire of the marines rifles and a machine gun but not before it had killed three marines. The other went into a berserker rage, charging and killing many marines in its blind rage. This, however, proved to be its downfall as Mike was able to sneak up behind it and climb up on its back. He slammed an armed frag grenade deep into it neck before he jumped off and the grenade went off, killing the hulking alien. Mike and the sorry remains of his unit then managed to board their transport and flee to orbit before more Covenant troops arrived. Mike still kept fighting in the war until he was placed in a special operations marine unit back in the inner colonies. Here he was tasked with fighting against rebels. Though there were a few rebel groups here and there, he was in the end, by his own request, stationed back on Earth. Here he spent the last years of the war during patrols on the various colonies in the Sol system. In late contacted Emma him and told him that she was with child and begged for him to leave the military and get a civilian job instead. Mike still wanted to take revenge for the atrocities done by the Covenant but also wanted to take care of his growing family. He agreed to leave the military after one more year of service and Emma, somewhat relived, agreed to his terms. The Covenant, however, would find Earth almost a year later and the and the rest of the Sol system began. Mike was stationed on when the Covenant invaded. The attack came as a surprise to all on Luna but thanks to the orbital super MAC cannons around Earth was its moon's defenses ready to take on the alien invasion force. Mike and his unit had just finished evacuating civilians and bunked in with a lot of machine guns and rocket launchers on one of the larger streets when the first Covenant troops arrived. Covenant troops, big and small alike, were torn to shreds when they tried to push through the human defenders. Mike and his men were able to hold their position for four days before the Covenant had had enough of them and sent in two battalions of to flush them out. The plasma mortar strikes devastated their position and they were forced to pull back. Mike, however, saw an opportunity presenting itself when the Wraiths slowly pushed through the street between the tall buildings. Gathering his men, he ordered them to rig a nearby building that had suffered great damage from various explosive weapons from both sides. Mike sent a few of his men to place the explosives while the rest would try and distract the Wraiths for as long as they could. While they managed to destroy two Wraiths with the few rockets they had left, taking on two entire battalions of Wraiths proved completely impossible and many of his men paid with their lives to slow the Wraiths. Finally, the explosives were in place and armed. Mike lured the Wraiths down to the damaged building and ordered his men to detonate the explosives, making the entire building fall down on top of the Wraiths. Having not only destroyed the Wraiths but also sealed a large road for the Covenant to advance much further into the city gained the human defenders much needed relief in that sector and allowed them to focus their far stretched resources elsewhere. Mike and the rest of the unit were then redeployed to another sector of the city to reinforce other units in holding back the Covenant onslaught. This repeated itself through the rest of the battles on Luna until the end of the war. After everything was settled on Installation 00 and a truce was struck between the Sangheili and the humans could Mike finally return home to Earth and help in the cleanup effort. He hoped that Emma had been spared from any harm but when he got home was he saw that most of his apartment had collapsed. Hurrying into his ruined home he found Emma dead on the floor, killed by a Sangheili's . Mike was devastated by his loss and was discharged from active duty due to mental instability. Post War In the months after the conclusion of the war was Mike mourning the death of his family. He tried to drown his sorrow with alcohol but it didn't help him. Feeling a deep hatred towards all that was and is Covenant he forced himself to stopped his drinking and left Earth to pursue a life as an assassin. He proved to be very capable and ruthless in his job. It didn't take long before powerful organizations began hiring him to remove people of interest or collect important pieces of information for them. The biggest of them, however, was the terrorist organization known as the Ember Coalition that hired him in mid . Other than offering him a large sums of money for the jobs they hired him to do he was also given the pleasure of hunting down human and Covenant individuals important to the stability of the fragile peace. Mike took great pleasure in working for the Coalition and gladly went to extreme measures to take down his targets. Things looked great for Mike for the next year but bad luck eventually struck. He was out on an assignment for the Coalition to destroy an old Covenant refueling station now occupied by a mix of human and pirates. Mike was spotted during his infiltration and failed to destroy the station. He managed to flee but was badly wounded during a firefight between him and some of the pirates. Mike blamed his employees for a lack of information on the pirates and the layout of the station. Robert Cullen and the other leaders of the Coalition's innermost circle apologized to him and offered him a quick way to get back on his feet again and make him better than before if he agreed to be their test subject for a new line of cybernetically-enhanced soldiers. Mike accepted their offer and he was transported to on of the Coalition's hidden laboratories. Mike was put into an artificial coma before the procedure. The doctors amputated his arms and legs and replaced them with powerful, military grade cybernetic replacements. They also replaced his eyes and linked them to an extensive network of neural input systems linked directly to his brain. The procedure took well over eight hours and they nearly lost Mike multiple times during the operation, especially when they began inserting the wide network in his brain. Mike, however, pulled through it and was kept in a coma for three more days to monitor how his body accepted the many advanced cybernetics. Mike woke up on the fourth day and both physical and mental tests were carried out to see how well he could use them. The advance cybernetics proved to surpass all expectations. Mike became not only much faster and stronger but his reflexes, as well as senses such as hearing and vision also became much better. Over the next many months was Mike send on missions by the Coalition but as time passed he began to slowly lose his touch of his humanity, slowly beginning to see himself as nothing more than a machine or construct. At the peak of his confusion, he had become so cold that even his superiors within the Coalition began to think there were something very wrong with him. Mike, However, disappeared for the Coalition's radar during what should have been a simple mission before they could examine him for any flaws. In truth, he had been contacted by an AI who had secretly joined the Created and had offered him to join them in their cause. Feeling more like one of the AIs than a human being he accepted its offer and deserted from the Coalition. Created Crisis Mike was brought to a Forerunner facility only known to the Created who had also taken control of it. Here he demanded to be upgraded with Forerunner technology before he would take to the battlefield. The AIs complied to his request. Mike's arms and legs were once again replaced, this time with much more advanced technology the likes of which the Promethean Soldiers used. His eyes and the network in his brain was also replaced with Forerunner technology. By the time he was finished with his upgrades was and ready to begin their galaxy-wide takeover. Mike arrived at one of the inner colonies only a few days after Cortana had arrived at Earth in one of her . Mike took the role as the commanding officer of the Created occupation force on the planet. He ruled with an iron fist but as he saw the planet's population rise up in hopeless rebellions only to be slaughtered he began to question what he was doing was the right thing. With his humanity and the machine part of him battling inside of him, he participated less and less in the battles against the rebels. His humanity finally won when he participated in a raid on a rebel outpost. Mike and a force of Promethean Soldiers stormed the rundown apartment building, killing any rebels they saw. Mike had pushed up onto the top floor where he found a young girl that reminded him a lot of a younger version of his late wife, Emma, from before they had moved to New York City. The girl came at him with a knife but he easily subdued the young girl. He was about to chain her hand with some chains laying around when a few Soldiers entered the room and shot the young girl at first sight. Mike was shocked by this, witnessing how he found Emma dead in their apartment over and over again inside his head. Days later, came Mike to the realization that what the Created was doing was wrong. He linked himself to the orbiting Guardian and forced it to attack the Created headquarters on the planet, killing most of the AIs on the planet as well as a large chunk of their troops. He then broadcast a planet-wide message for the people to rise up against the Created. Rebellions quickly rose up and with the Guardian now on their side was the human population quickly able to overthrow the Created. When the planet was liberated,Boarded Mike the Guardian and left the planet to fight the Created elsewhere. Taking over the Coalition After the conclusion of the Created Crisis went Mike into hiding for a few months. It's speculated that he had destroyed the Guardian at some point, how he did it is not known, and traveled to for a time before he left the planet for some other safe haven. He suddenly returned on both the Ember Coalition's and the UNSC's radar when he was seen leading minor insurrection groups only to reappear somewhere else, now working for other rebel movements. The Coalition managed to track him down before the UNSC could and offered him to return to them. Mike accepted the offer and worked with the Coalition for a few months. In that time he managed to get in contact with various supporters and high ranking members of the Coalition to support him in a coup. Many, fed up with the lack of progress the Coalition had made so far, gave him their support. Mike and his supporters then confronted the leaders of the Coalition, killing their guards and Mike personally executing each of the leaders. Robert Cullen, the true founder of the Ember Coalition, was the last to be executed by Mike. After the brutal takeover, declared Mike himself the sole leader of the Coalition and all of its assets. Cybernetics *Cybernetic Arms and legs: Mike have had his arms and legs replaced with mechanical parts first by the engineers of the Ember Coalition and then later by the Created who upgraded most of his cybernetics with Forerunner technology and alloy. Due to these upgrades his arms and legs are far superior to those made by the UNSC and bu extension humanity. They are more durable, require less maintenance and handle more pressure than regular military grade cybernetics. *Enhanced senses: Appearance Personality Category:Vadumverse Antagonists